Hi I'm Hattie Voelcker and welcome to Step 3 of my three-stage vlog on "Why do we
procrastinate? - The 3 reasons and how to stop!" Today I'm going to be looking at
the quickest fix to procrastination. People often underestimate the impact
the language they use with themselves has on how they feel. As in step 2, I
talked about how, when we're putting something off, we have a tendency to use
the language Should Must Ought Got or Need to try and get ourselves moving on
that task. So for example "I really should practice" "I really need to prepare for
that next task I'm doing" "I really need to get my kitchen tidy" (if you're me!)
The trouble is this, as I said in step 2, this makes us feel, and therefore react,
like children. So even if we do do it, we do it reluctantly, but there is this huge
tendency to then procrastinate, to put it off - either because we feel vulnerable or
we're worried about failing, or we just feel rebellious and don't like being
told what to do; and in addition there's no reward for doing the stuff we
should or we ought. "You did what you ought to have done, you did what you
needed - big wow!" So it's there's no carrot, it's all stick and that stick is the
stick of shame because if you don't do something you should, then really you
failed and you should be ashamed of yourself. Instead what we can do is think
about what we want to achieve, ask ourselves why is it we're telling
ourselves we should do this, why do we feel we should do that or we ought to do
that, we need to do that. What is it that we want to achieve by doing that? As soon
as we start doing that we start to focus on our goals which is much more positive
because our goals are always things that we want to achieve! So what is your goal,
what is it you really want to achieve and why is it you feel that you ought to
do the thing that you're telling yourself you should do? When you start to
establish what it is, that gives you the
capacity to start to change your language, which is part and parcel of
changing how you feel about the task. If instead of talking about what you should
do you start talking about what you want to achieve, or what you'd like to do, or
love to feel, or enjoy having, then it puts a positive slant on the whole thing
and these are what I call WELL words. Want, Enjoy, Like, and Love. They're
positive words that help us focus on the positive involved. For example if it's
about preparing and you say "Well I really need to prepare" and you ask
yourself the question "Okay, why do I need to prepare? Well I need to prepare
because I'm worried about remembering all my words. Well what is it you
want? I want to remember all my words." So then you can focus the task. "I want to
prepare because I want to remember all my words" and
you then have the task you're doing to achieve a positive which feels more
empowering a more optimistic, and less likely that you're going to put off. So
if you can exchange your SMOG words for your WELL words you can start to feel
more optimistic about your goals. Sometimes the goal can be a little bit
far away for you to for the feeling of what wanting that goal to be strong
enough to pull you along, and there may be several steps you have to take before
you get to that goal. For some other people sometimes focusing on what we
want, enjoy, like, or love can feel hedonistic. You can feel self-indulgent
and so they find it hard to use WELL words. When this is the case you can use
what I call WISE words, what would it be Wise, Intelligent Sensible or
Effective for you to do at this stage?
Unlike SMOG words where there's no reward,
there's no carrot at the end, when you look at WISE words they are
aspirational words and therefore there is a carrot at the
end. If you do something wise then what does that say about you? Kind of says
you're wise. If you do something intelligent, same thing. Sensible,
Effective, they're all things that if we do tasks that we consider wise,
intelligent, sensible, or effective we feel good about ourselves at the end. So
if we take ourselves back to the psychology of this with both WELL words
and WISE words, if we start to ask ourselves what we want or what we think
would be intelligent or sensible to do we're starting to treat ourselves like
adults and that gives us the capacity to
respond as adults. We're starting to ask our own opinion and trust that opinion
so you're not telling yourself what to do, you're not saying "You must do this,
you should do that." You're giving yourself
options and this allows you to respond in Adult, to make the wise decision that
you've always been capable of but you just didn't trust yourself to. It changes
your focus from feeling like a vulnerable child, overwhelmed by the
things you feel you should do, to a grown-up capable of making wise
decisions and being in control of those decisions. It empowers you which feels
good and, just as with children, if you give yourself responsibility you're much
more likely to step up to the mark, step up to that responsibility and make the
wise decisions and do the things that are wise to do in order to achieve your
goals. If you'd like to understand a little bit more about this technique
then go to my website and download my Lifting the SMOG workbook, findyourtruevoice.co.uk,
or you can click on the link attached to this video. In the
meantime focus your attention on what it is you want to achieve and why you want
to achieve that. Trust yourself to be wise enough to take the steps necessary
to achieve your goals without to treating yourself like a child. Let go
of the SMOG language and replace it with the more positive language of WISE
and WELL and then see what you achieve by doing this. I think you'll be
surprised. I have one last piece of advice for you but before that I hope
you've enjoyed this 3 vlog series on stopping procrastination. If you have
then why not sign up for my 5 Steps to Producing your Best Performance in
which I share with you the best way to feel confident when performing and
produce a performance that really impacts your audience. To do that, again,
go to my website at findyourtruevoice.co.uk or click on the link
attached to the video. So my final piece of advice is that these SMOG words can
actually be indicators, they can be flags that let you know that you are feeling
vulnerable or daunted by something. If you notice that your using Should Must
Ought Got or Need around a task it may be an indicator that there's something
about that task that is triggering something that makes you feel like a
child inside, and you may have already started to procrastinate without
realising it yet. If this is the case then you can go back to step one and ask
yourself the question: "What's that about? What is going on for me that is making
it hard for me to do this thing?" You may be surprised by the answer you give
yourself! I'm Hattie Voelcker, thank you for watching. Bye bye.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét